France: 3m watch online TV

From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris

April 1, 2016

Three million viewers aged 15 and above now watch live or catch-up TV each day and average around 1 hour and 40 minutes on a computer, tablet or smartphone. This is 200,000 people more than last year, according to a TV study by Médiamétrie. In comparison, 8 out of 10 still watch TV every day.

Among those three million second screen users, the strongest with a 36% increae, comes from tablets users. Just over 76 per cent of French people own a smartphone or a tablet, with the latter device boasting 270,000 additional viewers compared to the previous year. Half of French families have one tablet per household.

For online TV viewing, the computer remains the main device used, though the study also adds mobile screens are used by 1.45 million people each day, which 300,000 up over one year.

The 15-24 demographic is the biggest consumer for TV viewing on other screens, with 820,000 people (11.2 per cent) doing so daily. They spend 12 per cent of their daily TV viewing time on a device compared to 2 per cent for older people. Some 266,000 of them, compared to 171,000 in 2014, prefer watching TV content from their mobile phone.